of all born in his house . They were members of his household . They had grown up in his house . Yet , he still trained them before he armed them . He did not assume that they would know what to do since they were born in his household . He must have taken them through a very rigorous training process . Only when he had done this did he arm them .
If you arm people that you have not trained well , you will put yourself in great danger because they will use the ammunition indiscriminately and they can use it against you .
How do we know that Abraham ’ s team was a true dream team ? They defeated all the kings and chased them all the way to Damascus and rescued all the captives and all the loot that had been taken from Sodom . An army of three hundred and eighteen that was well-trained had done the unthinkable . They had defeated an army of Nations . It is not in the numbers . It is in the training .
Your team represents you and carries your name . They do so in sales and marketing , in customer service , in client support and in so many other ways . If you do not train them , each contact they have with the outside world could be a potentially lethal blow to you and what you stand for . No matter where they have been , each army has its own unique culture and so you must ensure that your troops are adequately trained in the culture of your army . Training builds the capacity to be able to deal with your unique battles . Training gives the mental positioning that is required to launch a successful campaign . Training periods are rebooting sessions when the troops are withdrawn from the day to day operations and equipped again . It must be a continuous process .
In the book ‘ How Toyota Changed the World ’, K Dennis Chambers points out that : Toyota created a whole philosophy , called kaizen ( ky-zen ), which teaches workers the value of continuous incremental improvement every day . Toyota nurtures its employees and keeps trying to put people in positions where they fit best . Managers use operating manuals the way Supreme Court justices use the U . S . Constitution – studying it word for word , practice for practice . And Toyota has plans that extend 20 years out into the future . They are in business for the long haul and take pains every day to remind people of that fact . When a manufacturer focuses time and effort and money on making every small thing excellent , it will be excellent in the big things .
Thinkers like John Naisbitt the author of the book Megatrends which was first published in 1982 , believes that the biggest challenge for the information age is not so much the retaining of managers but the retraining of managers . If thinkers held this view in 1982 , imagine how true it is today .
The best form of training is when the troops are trained to respond and not react . If we can shift our thinking from reacting to responding , we will be better at dealing with situations and we will produce great troops . Respond ? React ? Is there a difference ? When a person is said to
‘‘ If you arm people that you have not trained well , you will put yourself in great danger because they will use the ammunition indiscriminately and they can use it against you .’’ be responding to medication , it is a positive sign . If the person is however reacting to medication then this is a negative sign .
How do we move to a place where we respond and not react ? Consider the fire department . The rookie fireman starts work and immediately is looking forward to his first day of action . What he calls action is a disaster to someone else . He however looks forward to it and is not shaken by it simply because he is prepared . This is not to say that we should now expect bad things to happen but it means that we have built inner capacity and fortitude when there was no pressure so that no matter what happens to us , we have enough inner strength to withstand and come out as winners .
The kaizen culture says that even if there is no immediate emergency , we will train for the future . Many organizations today engage training on a per need basis . They say , ‘ oh my team is working in silos therefore can you come and do training for them to break this ?’ Others want a change management training when after certain changes the team is no longer cohesive . Such issues should be built into the kaizen program even before they show up .
Kaizen says that at this rate of development , by the time you are at point X you will be facing challenge Y . We therefore will not wait for the challenge to emerge before training you to deal with it . That will be reactionary and in battle that spells certain death .
Kaizen like war is to imagine what the enemy will do before it happens , to get proper intelligence about the road ahead and to prepare for it . It is to know that you will need to be equipped for both internal and external changes that will be in place years from now . It is to have a proper picture of the political , economic ,